Hazardous Holiday
Zach grunted his disagreement but didn’t get out a word before the door flung open and three towheaded kids raced inside. They shouted and cheered as Matt squatted before them, scooping even the oldest—probably seven or eight—into his arms.
Each child was given a hard kiss on the forehead before Ashley, their mom, arrived. The kids seemed to know the drill, and they parted ways as she reached her husband and held him tightly.
Kristi took several shuffling steps backward. She didn’t belong here. Not with these real family reunions. Grabbing for Cody’s hand, she snagged Zach’s bare forearm instead, and they both jumped at the contact.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice barely carried, but the firm shake of his head told her he’d heard her just fine.
“Are you ready to go home?” he asked.
She looked away. “Anytime.”
“Let me get my bag.”
When she reached for Cody, the boy whimpered and tucked his head into Zach’s neck. Kristi flinched. “I’m sorry. He’s really tired. This is usually one of his rest times.”
Zach didn’t quite smile, but there was a tenderness in his eyes as he readjusted the weight in his arm. “No problem. I’ll be right back.”
True to his word, Zach ducked into an office and returned in less than a minute. The large camouflage bag slung over his shoulder was bigger than her son, but he carried both without any indication of the burden. With a wave to his fully occupied teammates, he ushered her into the bright sunlight and to the car.
Usually she had to wrestle Cody into his seat when he was on the verge of sleep, but Zach made it look easy. And with his bag stowed in the trunk, he looked from the driver’s door to her hands to her face. “Want me to drive?”
“Oh.” Her gaze dropped to the faintly jingling keys in her trembling fingers. That’s right. She didn’t have to drive all the time now. She wasn’t alone anymore. Even if she didn’t know quite what that meant. “Sure. That would be nice.”
When she climbed into the passenger side, she had another reason to be grateful she’d passed over the keys. His letters were still strewn across the floorboard, and she scrambled to collect them and shove them into her oversize purse before he noticed.
* * *
Zach couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her, even as he pulled off the base and toward the bridge.
He’d never had a welcoming party before. His mom and dad had tried to meet him following his first deployment, but after his team had been delayed and then called back to duty, they’d headed back to Texas. This was new. And not unpleasant.
“You didn’t have to be here today.” His tone came out thicker, gruffer than he’d intended, and her eyes flashed wide.
“Should we not have come? I didn’t know what you’d want, and we didn’t realize—”
He held up his hand quickly to cut her off while he cleared his throat. “No. I’m glad you did. I just wasn’t expecting it. You didn’t have to.”
Kristi’s head dipped, her hair falling over her shoulder and blocking his view of her face. “Ashley called and told me to be here. I thought maybe you’d asked her to get in touch with us.”
His stomach gave an involuntary jerk, and he pressed a fist to his knee. He should have thought to do that. He’d just never had a family in San Diego before. Not even an unconventional one.
“I guess we both have some adjusting to do.”
She heaved a little sigh that sounded as tightly wound as he was. And in some strange way, it helped to know that he wasn’t the only one unsure how to navigate this new terrain.
As he pulled her little green four-door onto the bridge, a large black van came up behind them. He watched it through the rearview, its bulk taking up most of his mirror and making the hairs on his arms stand up. It was following them awfully closely.
He frowned but kept his speed up, shifting into the middle lane of the eastbound traffic. The van stayed put, and he let out a slow breath.
“Cody’s been so excited to see you. He told the checker at the grocery store that his SEAL was coming home. I think she thought you were a pet.”
Zach chuckled. “I’ve been called a lot worse. He’s a good kid. It was nice to get his emails every week.” With a glance into the backseat, he checked on the sleeping boy. “How’s he doing?”
Kristi hugged her giant bag to her chest and plastered on something that he assumed was supposed to resemble a smile. It came much closer to a grimace.
“He’s...tired. All the time. He’s not getting enough oxygen, and the doctor said that pretty soon he’ll either have to carry around a canister or move into the hospital full-time.”
That made sense. The kid’s lips were borderline blue, and his breathing was too fast.
He shot another glance in Cody’s direction.
But his gaze snagged on the two black vans that were now behind them. His pulse soared.
Snapping his focus back to the front, he saw what he’d missed before. A third van in the left lane, slowing down. In a few seconds it would be at their side.
The vans had set up a tactical maneuver.
He’d seen a thousand of them in training and in the field, and it didn’t take him more than a second to work out what was happening. They were going to box him in. To what end, he couldn’t be sure. Would they try to force his car off the bridge?
As if on cue, the van to the left jerked to a near stop, tires squealing and cars behind it laying on their horns.
The painful screech stopped Kristi’s chatter. “What’s going on?”
Zach motioned toward the van, then to the right, where another pulled up alongside them. They didn’t seem to be trying to force him off the bridge, then—so what was their plan? He slowed way down, putting extra space between him and the vehicle ahead. It was a tractor trailer. Running into that could seriously injure him and Kristi and Cody. Was that the goal?
He continued slowing down to the annoyed honks of everyone behind them. But he didn’t have another choice. There were three eastbound lanes and no way off the two-mile bridge. Traffic was hemmed in by a cement barrier blocking oncoming traffic on the left and a relatively low guardrail on the right. But with enough force, at the right angle, the car could go up and over.
And into the Pacific.
His stomach sank faster than a car in the ocean.
The van on the right was edging closer to them, while the one on their left held its position, keeping Zach from an evasive maneuver. Braking hard wasn’t going to work either. Not with the third van right on their six.
Kristi gasped and covered her eyes, then nearly lunged for the backseat. “Cody.”
Zach gave her a push until she was facing the front. “Sit down. Keep your belt on.”
It was terse and a bit sharp. And all he could manage at the moment.
The van to the left pulled ahead while the one on the right veered into their lane. Zach didn’t have another choice. He had to pull into the vacancy, even as the lumbering black beast on his right kept pressing them closer and closer to the divider. If they hit it just right, the front end could crumple in on them. Or they could flip over the divider into oncoming traffic.
He had to get out of there.
He had to get his family to safety.
Find the opening. Find the exit strategy.
His instructors had drilled it into him. There was always a way to escape. He just had to wait until it presented itself.
It took half a second to see it. He didn’t pause to analyze. He just floored it. They shot ahead of the van on the right, which couldn’t keep up with the lighter sedan. Zipping behind the semi and into the far lane, they shot forward into the clear. The vans tried to catch up, but the end of the bridge was in sight.
As soon as they were on land, he veered off to a side street, searching for a pursuit that didn’t come.
Kristi’s chest rose and fell rapidly, her panting breaths filling the otherwise silent car.
Zach narrowed his gaze and stared into her pinched features.
“You want to tell me what exactly I came home to?”
TWO
Zach eased Cody into the bottom bunk and pulled the covers under his chin. The little guy had slept through the whole ordeal on the bridge and even through the tense drive back to the town house. But now he let out a loud yawn, and his eyes blinked open.
“Is it nighttime?”
Zach leaned over Cody and shook his head. “Nope. But for now, you should get some rest. Have a good na—” he pulled himself up short “—sleep.”
Cody yawned again and snuggled beneath the red blanket covered in classic Corvettes. “Okay.”
Kristi watched everything from the doorway, and when he sneaked past her, she stayed put, her head never turning away from Cody’s face. It glowed in two low beams, the headlights of a red ’57 Chevy night-light.
After several long seconds, she followed Zach down the stairs toward the kitchen, tripping on his duffel, which he’d dropped by the front door.
This wasn’t a good sign. He never left things lying around, but one quick trip up the stairs with the kid, and he’d already forgotten his usual routine.
“Sorry.” He grabbed the bag and carried it through the kitchen before shoving it into the laundry room, which now housed a metal shelf between the washer and dryer and more types of laundry detergent than a grocery store aisle.
What else had she changed while he’d been gone?
But there were more pressing questions that needed to be answered first.
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes unseeing. As if on autopilot, she grabbed a plastic cup, filled it with apple juice and held it out to him.
“I could go for a soda, actually.”
“What?” She jumped at his voice and looked down at the cup in her hand, then back at his face. The blank mask she’d been wearing since the bridge fell away, and an actual smile dropped into place. “I’m sorry. I was thinking...”
“About who might have been trying to push us into the Pacific?”
Her brows locked together, fear flashing through her deep brown eyes, and he suddenly hated himself for being so blunt. But tiptoeing around an issue had never been his forte.
Looking away from her, he grabbed a can from the fridge and popped the top. Tipping it back, he took a swig. And nearly spit it out.
Diet.
Yuck.
Glancing over to see if she’d noticed his near spit take, he watched as she ran her hands over her hair, a wild mass of honey-colored curls that reached well past her shoulders and looked softer than satin. “I just don’t understand,” she said. “Why would someone do that? They were trying to...”
“Kill us. Yes.” Her face paled, and he tried to keep his voice low and gentle. Not easy after a year with a bunch of guys who didn’t do coddling. “And they wanted it to look like an accident.”
She swallowed, the sound filling the otherwise silent kitchen. Pressing a palm to the counter and the other over her stomach, she took several great breaths as the fear in her eyes shifted into something that resembled anger. “My son was in that car.”
The truth hit like a boot to the kidneys. If someone was after him or Kristi, Cody would have been collateral damage, and whoever was inside those vans didn’t care.
If a six-year-old wasn’t safe, none of them were.
Zach took a step toward her, and she matched it in reverse, keeping three feet between them. But she kept her chin up and her eyes open and said nothing.
“That was broad daylight, Kristi. Someone was blatantly targeting us.”
“I know.” Her words carried a subtle tremor that she must have noticed because she paused, straightened her shoulders and tried again. “They were after me.”
His entire body went on high alert, every muscle tensing, every nerve crackling. She sounded so certain, but he needed more details. “Why do you think that?”
Neck and shoulders stiffer than a frozen tarp, she stared right into his eyes. “Because Jackson Cole pointed right at me and said he’d make me pay.”
The floor seemed to disappear beneath him, and he stumbled to a stool at the counter. He pointed at the seat beside him. “Maybe you should start from the beginning.”
She looked from the spot beside him to the juice in her hand several times before nodding, setting the cup in the sink and then padding around the end of the counter and swiveling onto the stool.
“I’m not even sure where the beginning is.” She stared down at the granite counter.
“Why don’t you try from the day I left?”
Another small nod. “I applied for a job right before you left.”
“With the lawyers. Right. In one of Cody’s emails, you said you got it. Are you still working there?” He’d told her she didn’t have to work, but she’d insisted. She’d gotten to know one of Zach’s neighbors—an elderly woman who lived alone—who was happy to keep an eye on Cody while she was at the office in exchange for Kristi driving her on a couple of errands every week. Kristi had told Zach that she needed to make friends and start a life here. So he hadn’t argued the matter.
“I’ve been with Jessup, Jessup and Holcomb almost as long as you’ve been gone. I’m a part-time receptionist. Just fifteen hours a week. It’s a prestigious firm with a good reputation—but the team isn’t very big. The three partners, two junior lawyers and some paralegals and investigators.”
“And you,” he said.
“Yes, and me.” Her voice petered out, and her gaze locked on something on the far wall. Something that hadn’t been there a year ago.
It looked like a framed drawing, the reds and yellows of a crayon mostly inside the black lines of a muscle car. It must have been colored by Cody, who apparently loved cars. The ones he could stay awake to see anyway.
“So this Jackson Cole guy... He worked with you?”
“No.” Her expression tightened. “He wanted Walt Jessup to defend him. He was—is—a well-connected, well-known drug dealer. And the city finally got the evidence they needed for a trial. Cole thought that Walt was the only one who could get him off the charges.”
“But Walt refused?” It wasn’t really a question. He’d put the pieces together easily enough.
“When Walt turned him down, Cole went nuts. He tore the waiting room apart, turning over chairs and breaking lamps.” She pulled her hands into fists. Zach couldn’t do anything but cup his hand over her arm as a silent reminder that she didn’t have to carry the burden alone. “And just before he left, he pointed at Walt, then at me, and said he’d get even.”
The fear in her voice twisted at his gut. He needed to fix this for her. Now. “When did that happen?”
“About four weeks ago.” She looked into his eyes, hers steady. She was holding it together pretty well, all things considered.
But he didn’t want her to hold it together. He wanted her happy and safe. And Cody healed.
“Is this the first time something like this has happened?”
She frowned. “The first actual attack. But I’ve seen them around. Not those vans exactly, but cars that I don’t know parked on the street, watching us. And one night I came home and there was someone peeking into the windows. He took off before I could get a good look at him.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Yes. Walt had called them after the waiting room incident. And I called the same detective. Sunny something...” Her voice trailed off, and he easily filled in the blanks.
“She took your statement, but you haven’t heard back from her.”
“Yes.”
Zach let the story tumble over in his mind. Something didn’t sit quite right with what she’d told him. Not that he didn’t believe she was telling the truth. It just wasn’t adding up to what he’d seen on the bridge—an organized attack.
Jackson Cole sounded like the type of guy who’d fly off the handle at any perceived slight. Not the type to plot and plan. It took patience and strategy to get three vans to run a specific car off the road. Men with those qualities didn’t usually throw temper tantrums when they didn’t get their way.
Besides, she still hadn’t answered one key question. “Why you? There are at least a dozen people in the office. Why’d he pick you?”
“I’m not entirely sure. Maybe because I was the one who told him Walt wouldn’t take a meeting with him. Or maybe because I was handy and he recognized my face.”
Zach nodded but kept silent for a long moment. There had to be more to this situation. Had she been privy to some information that Cole needed to keep a secret? Had she seen something in a file she wasn’t supposed to?
Maybe she didn’t even know what she wasn’t supposed to know.
But they’d figure it out. Together.
He slid his touch down the slender bones of her arm. At her hand, he pulled it into his, lacing their fingers and squeezing softly. Her hand fit so well into his grasp, petite and soft, just like the rest of her.
The urge to pull her into his arms nearly knocked him off his stool, but he wasn’t free to do that. They had signed a paper in the judge’s office that said they were man and wife. But that’s all she’d agreed to. And he wouldn’t push her for more. Not now.
Not ever.
Even if it nearly killed him.
He scrubbed his free hand down his face and looked away from her warm brown eyes.
He was all kinds of an idiot.
But he’d marry her again in a heartbeat if that’s what it took to help Aaron’s son. And he’d do anything to keep them both safe.
“First we have to call the police. Then I guess I’d better talk with Walt and see if he has any more information about Jackson Cole.” Her eyes widened and Zach could see she wasn’t pleased with the idea, but he had no intention of backing down. He was going to do whatever it took to protect her, whether she liked it or not.
* * *
This had been a terrible idea, but Kristi hadn’t been able to talk Zach out of it. After a quick and unhelpful call to Detective Sunny Diaz, who’d said she couldn’t help without license plates or models on the vans—neither of which they had—Zach had insisted they talk with Walt.
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice low as he stepped out of the car. He could probably feel the strain coming off her in waves.
He walked around the hood of the car, opened her door and held out his big, callused hand. The tips of his fingers were blunt, the skin toughened by hard work. Yet they were cupped in a gentle invitation.
Taking a deep breath, she put hers in his and let him pull her out.
“I don’t want to lose this job. Do you know how hard it is to find a part-time job with flexible hours and decent pay? If Cody is having a bad day, Walt lets me make up the hours another time. And if I get a call from Mrs. Drummond that Cody isn’t feeling well, I can leave at any time. I like working here, and they understand that Cody comes first. I don’t think there’s another job like this one.”
Also, she hadn’t told them that Zach was only sort of her spouse. They thought she was a military wife, and when they’d learned her husband was overseas they’d poured out to her. Bringing her food. Sharing a bonus check. Getting her car serviced. Offering her several extra days off when Zach returned.
But if they found out that they had a marriage built on necessity rather than love, would they feel like she’d taken advantage of their generosity?
Undoubtedly.
And she hadn’t exactly told Zach that her boss thought they were really married either.
This could be a disaster.
His smile turned solemn, but the light in his eyes didn’t disappear. “I won’t put it in jeopardy.” Taking a step closer and brushing an escaped curl behind her ear, he caught her gaze and held it. “You just have to remember that we’re married. Everyone loves meeting a military man back from overseas finally getting to spend time with his wife.”
“But where do I tell them you were?” She didn’t even know the answer to that.
“I’ll take care of it.” Squeezing her hand, which he still held, he winked at her. “Promise.”
Her stomach took a nosedive. They’d shared precisely twelve letters and four days together since they said their vows. But all the same, she trusted him. “All right.” With a deep breath and a sigh, she followed him into the five-story office building. The only sound in the elevator was the light jazz that made his eyebrows go up, as though asking if it could be any more cliché. “We don’t own the building. We just rent the top floor.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” There was a subtle twinkle in his eye that said he was teasing her. And it was an unfamiliar sensation. She hadn’t had inside jokes with anyone since Aaron, and it was a strange reminder of the little things she missed.
When the elevator doors dinged, she led the way and sent up a quick prayer that this wouldn’t be awkward.
Lord, let us find some answers and let me keep my job.
As soon as they reached the lobby, the office seemed to erupt. At the front desk, Ginger popped up, her eyes bright and hands outstretched. “Are you Zach?” Her voice carried and heads popped out of open doors up and down the hallway.
With a glance toward the boardroom, Kristi let out a breath of relief that there was no meeting on the other side of the glass wall for them to interrupt. Turning back to Ginger, she opened her mouth to introduce him, but she was too late.
He gave a little bow and shook her hand. “Chief Petty Officer Zach McCloud. It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
Ginger was barely thirty-five, only a few years older than Zach himself. She cooed at his formality. “Oh, Zach. Call me Ginger—everyone does. We’ve just been so eager to meet you. Where were you stationed?”
Of course. Of course, Ginger would start with the question that even Kristi couldn’t answer.
But Zach’s grin amped up, and he offered a wink, as though sharing a secret. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But I’m happy to be home.” He snagged an arm around Kristi’s waist. “With my family.”
Ginger chuckled but didn’t have time to respond as Teri and Trina, two blonde paralegals, descended on them. “Welcome home!” They spoke and moved as one, even though Teri was about eight inches taller than her counterpart.
Zach greeted them, too, all things friendly and jovial, but his arm never moved from around her middle. It was equal parts possessive and protective, and she let herself lean into his solid shoulder, trying not to analyze which part they were playing. Whatever he was doing was working. Everyone was at ease. Except for Kristi.
Then Walt arrived, his salt-and-pepper hair combed just right and a cautious smile in place. “Walt Jessup,” he said, quickly shaking Zach’s hand. “Thank you for your service.”
“It’s an honor, sir. Thank you for what you’ve done for Kristi.”
“Oh, she’s the one helping us. It’s hard to find such a smart, motivated employee for a part-time position.”
Her cheeks warmed at the praise. Clapping her hands over her face, she turned away. This wasn’t going so badly—overly flattering compliments aside. Everyone was friendly and happy to meet him, and true to his word, he hadn’t said anything worrisome.
Until he pulled Walt to the side. “I like the furniture in here. It looks new.”
Her insides twisted into a knot. That was a blatant lead-in to the real questions he wanted to ask.
Walt laughed it off. “Oh, we had a little trouble in here a few weeks back. I’m sure Kristi told you. A would-be client trashed the whole room. But it was a good excuse to redecorate.”
He nodded. “She did tell me. Have you had any more trouble with him?”
“I think he’s long gone.” Walt’s poker face was too good for Kristi to be sure if he really had nothing more to share about Cole.
Before Zach could ask any follow-up questions, Trina shrieked, “You have to come to the Christmas party.”
Zach rubbed the top of his head. “Christmas party?”
Walt slapped him on the back. “Of course. We have one for friends and family every year in the big conference room in the back. Food, dancing, plenty of holiday celebration. You’ll come.”
